Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Ms. Hen read this book because she had seen the movie, and
thought it was cute and zany, and wondered how the book would compare. She learned that the book was considered not able to be made into a movie, and she read the
book was classified as a New Wave book, even thought it was written in 1959,
before the French New Wave started.

Ms. Hen really enjoyed the movie. She thought it was similar
to AMELIE, only about a little girl who wants to ride the Metro in Paris and
can’t because there’s a Metro strike. She goes to visit her Uncle Gabriel, who
is a cross-dressing dancer in a night club, while her mother has a love affair
for the weekend. The movie is fast-paced, and the actress who plays Zazie is awkward
in a charming way.

Ms. Hen didn’t like the book as much as the movie. This
rarely happens with her.

The book is written is a strange way, and a very pretentious
way, Ms. Hen thought. Misspelled words riddle the book! On every page, there is
something similar to “Snot,” for is not, and “eggsagerated,” for exaggerated,
and so on and on. Ms. Hen had to stop to try to figure out what each word was,
and it slowed down her reading.

This is a very short book, but it took longer to read then
Ms. Hen thought it would because it was dense with these incorrectly spelled
words.

Also, there were no inner lives of the characters. Reading
ZAZIE IN THE METRO is like reading a screenplay. When Ms. Hen, and most people
she believes, read a novel, they want to know what in going on inside the
characters’ heads. That’s the beautiful aspect of a novel, the ability to know
what at least one person is thinking. There was nothing to about the
inner workings of Zazie and her compatriots, and that annoyed Ms. Hen. She thinks that
some readers might enjoy this, but Ms. Hen is curious hen, and she wants to
know the people in the book intimately.

There are a few chickens in this novel, but that didn’t make
up for how much Ms. Hen didn’t enjoy reading it. It takes more than chickens or
hens for Ms. Hen to like a book.

Ms. Hen does not recommend this novel. She would suggest the movie instead, which never happens, she knows! But rare things do
happen, like leprechauns, and mermaids, and the Metro in Paris getting shut
down.

Saturday, April 22, 2017

Ms. Hen is a hen who likes museums. She enjoys the quiet and
beauty of places where she can learn new things and be inspired. Before she
went to Iceland, she read about the different museums that are in Reykjavik
that she wanted to visit. She didn’t go to all of them, but she went to a few.

The Icelandic Phallological Museum

Ms. Hen read about this museum, and learned that it is the
largest collection of penises in the world. Ms. Hen is not a perverse hen, but
she loves things that are weird and freaky, so she decided she had to go. She stumbled
upon the museum during her first day in Iceland while she was taking a walk in
the rain looking for a coffee shop. The museum is a small room, full of jars of
animal penises, which are very strange looking. There are huge whale penises
sticking out of the wall, a polar bear penis, a killer what penis. There are
also very small ones that are just a speck, like a house mouse penis.

This museum was full of Americans, which disturbed Ms. Hen.
She thought it was because Americans are all perverts, or perhaps because there
would NEVER be such a museum in the United States. Either way, Ms. Hen spent
enough time there, took some pictures, and bought a shot glass. The museum is
expensive, it costs about fifteen dollars, which Ms. Hen thought was too dear,
but she considers it a once in a lifetime experience.

A variety of penises in jars

Reykjavik Art Museum

Ms. Hen went to two of the Reykjavik Art Museums,
Kjavasstadir, and Hafnerhus. She didn’t go to all three museums because she
didn’t have a car in Iceland, and it was a rainy day, and she didn’t want
to walk too far. The Kjavassatir was right near where she was staying. It is a
small museum with only a couple of galleries, but it was lovely. There was an
exhibit of things from Ikea, which Ms. Hen thought was strange, but other
exhibits of paintings and videos interested her more.

The Hafnerhus is situated near the center of town. It houses
paintings from the Erro Collection, who is one of Iceland’s best-known pop
artists. Ms. Hen was impressed by the breadth and color and urgency of his
work. She even found a hen in one of his paintings.

Can you find the hen?

The National Museum of Iceland

Ms. Hen loves history and things that are old. It was quite
an ordeal for her to get to this museum, because she had to walk a long way, but she loved it. She enjoyed looking
at artifacts from the time of the Vikings to modern times. Her favorite things were the cones that the Vikings drank out of; she didn’t get a picture of them,
but they were beautifully decorated horns that were used for everyday use and
also for ceremonies.

She took some pictures in an area of the museum where nobody
was hanging out. She liked the replica of the farmhouse where a family would live together in one room. And she thought the little boat was charming. Ms. Hen admires a
culture that can hold on to the past without resentment.

Ms. Hen thinks Iceland is a perfect place to visit museums
because most of the time it is raining, and it’s a good time to be inside. The
outdoors are beautiful, too, and Ms. Hen can enjoy nature, but there are lots of
things to enjoy in the world, like penises in jars, pop art, and Nordic
history.

Tuesday, April 18, 2017

When Ms. Hen was planning her trip to Iceland, she noticed
there was a GAME OF THRONES tour. She had tried to watch GAME OF THRONES, but
she was grossed out by the misogyny in the first three episodes of the first
season. But she wanted to go on the tour. She didn’t want to be someone who
goes on a tour and has never watched the show, so she watched the second season
in two days, since she found out that had the most scenes filmed in Iceland.
She was hooked! She watched all six seasons by the beginning of March, to get
ready for her adventure in Iceland.

When she got on the bus for the tour, she was startled by a
man in a costume with a sword taking tickets. He was the tour guide, Theo, and
he talked for the entire eight hours of the tour. He was extremely
entertaining, or Ms. Hen thought so, but he had a bit of a dirty mouth, and she
could understand why some people who live sheltered lives would be offended by
his remarks. Ms. Hen does not live a sheltered life, and she is used to
perversity, and sometimes even enjoys it in the right context.

Theo had been an extra on GAME OF THRONES for many seasons:
he was in the Night’s Watch, he was a Wildling, and he was a sentry overlooking
the Bloody Gate. He had lots of inside stories about GAME OF THRONES, including
one about the costumes of the Night’s Watch. He said they were made of very
thin material, and they were designed in South Africa. The men who were the
extras in the Night’s Watch were all Icelandic, and even though they were used
to the cold, they were not used to being soaked in such flimsy clothes in the rain.
They were told to act like they were suffering, but they didn’t have to act,
because they already were.

The first stop on the tour was the Laxness Horse Farm, where
the horses from GoT lived. Icelandic horses are much smaller than other horses,
and they are a pure breed. Other horses are not allowed to come to Iceland, so
they had a hard time filming GoT with the actor who plays the Hound, since he
is so large. The scenes with him in Iceland are shot in an awkward way, as Ms.
Hen remembers. The people on the tour got to feed the horses at the farm! Ms.
Hen was excited about this, since the horses were so beautiful.

The tour went to the waterfall where the scene was filmed when the
dragon kills the little boy in the field, and afterwards Daenerys chains the
other two dragons in the dungeon. Ms. Hen was amazed that this area passed for
the Mediterranean, even though it is in Iceland. The scene was filmed in the
height of summer when everything was green.

Ms. Hen and the tour got to go to the Bloody Gate, in Thingvellir National Park, an ancient site where the Vikings held their
Parliament. Ms. Hen was awed by the Bloody Gate, she even climbed down into it,
though she is not a very agile hen. She thought she might fall, but she didn’t.
The rock formations are beautiful. Ms. Hen learned about the authenticity of
the show. Theo told the group that there was a poor extra who had to carry a
crate full of lemons back and forth doing the takes over and over because the
producers and directors wanted the show to be authentic. They didn’t want a crate with
a few lemons on top, or the little plastic lemons; they had to have a crate
full of real lemons for Sansa because Littlefinger knew she liked lemon cakes
and he wanted her to be happy. She might have been happy, but the extra
carrying the crate was not.

Ms. Hen at The Bloody Gate

Also, there was a scene in which a rabbit was cooking on a
spit, and the directors wanted a real rabbit, because if it were fake fur and
plexiglass, it would burn black smoke and have an odor. Theo showed a picture
of an arm, and he was wondering if someone actually donated their arm to the
show, since the people wanted it to be so authentic. Ms. Hen knows that was a
joke.

The group went to a Viking village where the scene when the
Wildlings kill the people in their house and tell Ollie to go tell the crows
that Mance Raider is coming. Theo told a disturbing story about how he had been
an extra in many films, and he liked doing evil things. He said he got to play
a zombie, and he thought it couldn’t get better than that, because zombies were
so evil. Then he said he got to be more evil, because he played a zombie Nazi,
and he was so excited because he thought that was the absolute worst character
to play.

At the Viking Village

But then, in GoT, he got to murder a six-year old girl, and
he decided that was the utmost evil part to play, a child murderer. He
described in detail the young actress who played the little girl, and how every
time he had to pretend to kill her, she did a better job acting. He said she is
going to be a famous actress someday.

At the Viking village, he demonstrated different ways to
stab and punch someone while filming to make it look realistic for the camera.
Ms. Hen thought it was interesting, because it’s something a hen doesn’t hear
every day. Also, the village was situated overlooking a waterfall, which was
lovely. Iceland is full of waterfalls, almost to the point where Ms. Hen wanted
to say, “Oh, no, not another waterfall!” But she couldn’t, because how could a
hen say that?

Ms. Hen says, "Oh, no, not another waterfall!"

Ms. Hen thought the GAME OF THRONES tour was one of the highlights
of her trip to Iceland. She would recommend the tour to anyone, especially with
the exuberant madman Theo at the helm of the ship.

Friday, April 14, 2017

Ms. Hen went on a streak of reading Icelandic novels before
she went to Iceland, but she wanted to save one for when she was actually in
Iceland, and she decided it would be JAR CITY. She thinks this is the perfect novel
to read while sitting in her Airbnb in Reykjavik, or a coffee shop, or a
restaurant.

In this novel, it is autumn, and the rain is incessant. Ms.
Hen liked this because it rained practically every day she was in Iceland, so
she felt like it was happening. She felt as if she were in the novel with
the character trying to solve a murder.

This novel is a mystery, which Ms. Hen usually does not
read, because they are for the most part written badly. But this book is not; it is complicated, and has a lot of twists and turns and many colorful
characters.

A man is murdered is a basement apartment, and a note is
left behind which says, “I am him.” The man was smashed on the head with an
ashtray. The detective Erlender searches for who murdered him and why. The victim’s
past comes hurtling through: he was an accused rapist, and may have fathered
children in that way. He was the carrier of a brain disease than mainly killed
women.

This quest leads Erlender to a jar city, an organ collection
in jars. (This reminded Ms. Hen of the penis museum she visited in Reykjavik.)
Erlender is determined to find the murderer, but there are obstacles in his
way. This is different from other mysteries Ms. Hen has read, because she was
actually interested in what was going to happen, and there was not a formula
for the novel, new fascinating characters kept being introduced.

One interesting thing to Ms. Hen was that the murder victim
lived in a basement apartment in an area called Nordurmyri. She is staying in a
basement apartment near this area, which Google maps tells her, but she thinks
she might be staying in the area. The book says that these apartments were the
former maids’ quarters when the houses were owned by wealthy people. The fact
that the character lives in this area is important because it is a former marsh
area, and a body could be hidden in the ground under the house.

There was one mention of a chicken in this novel, Erlendur,
“called in at a takeaway and picked up a bag of fried chicken for dinner.”
There are lots of Kentucky Fried Chickens in Iceland, but Ms. Hen refused to
eat at them. She will only eat a decent restaurant, or not an American one. But
the character does not take care of himself. He is stressed from his job and
his life and eats badly and does not exercise.

Ms. Hen loved JAR CITY. She understands there is a sequel,
but she does not usually read those. She enjoyed reading this novel while in
Iceland because it gave her more of an understanding of the Icelandic nature,
which is quiet, determined, and has a sense of humor.